This is What Matters
by on rooftops
Summary: Harry wanted his daughter to know things in the gentle, absolute way that children come to understand the world. He wanted her to be Lily, herself. — Harry and Lily Luna - For Allie Caulfield


**Disclaimer: **As much as I wish it was, _Harry Potter_ is not mine.

**A/N:** This is for Allie Caulfield, who asked for a fic about Harry and Lily Luna, just after the boys went off to Hogwarts. I'm sorry this took me so long to get out, and I hope you like it!  
(I've never written gen before, so go easy on me.)

Harry wanted his daughter to know things in the gentle, absolute way that children come to understand the world. He wanted her to be confident and sure in her place – not necessarily her place as the daughter of the most famous witch and wizard in Britain, nor in the place that her head of fire put her, nor even in the place that the magic shivering across her skin put her – he wanted her to be Lily, herself.

At nine, Lily was entirely sure of who she was, of course. She was James and Albus' pesky little sister, but also their favorite – if you pushed them. She was Rose's cousin and Hugo's best friend and her parents were her parents and that was it, that was all. What did she care if flashbulbs burst whenever they went out into London, if whispers of _the_ Harry Potter, _the _Ginny Weasley followed her everywhere? This could not matter, for nine year old Lily Potter was who she was and if her face was all over the _Prophet_ for that, then who gave a damn? (Except, she wasn't supposed to know that word. Take it up with Uncle Ron if you want, but he'd just say that Lily was a bloody sponge. If there was something to learn, she'd learn it.)

But Harry knew that in one moment, one brief instant, Lily's security would shatter. It had happened for James and Al after arriving at Hogwarts, and as he sat at the kitchen table, reading Al's first letter home from school, Harry dreaded the day that Lily would doubt herself too.

Al's words sounded so familiar, Harry could barely believe that it had been a year since James had sent home a similar story:

_And I met this fifth year – Jared Smith – and he seemed all right. He's a Hufflepuff, aren't they all friendly? But then he started asking me and Rose all these questions about you and Mum, like were the gossip papers right about how much you fight and whether Mum really had an affair with that chaser from the Cannons and…_

_Rose hexed him._

_But all of that's just rubbish, right Dad?_

Ginny pushed through the door into the kitchen, balancing a stack of moldy dishes in both hands, "Look what I found under James' bed. I swear to Merlin, that boy will be the absolute death of me."

Harry sent the plates to the sink with a distracted wave of his wand, reached out his hand and took Ginny's to pull her to her usual position on his lap and pressed a gentle kiss to her neck as he handed her the letter. "From Al," he explained, and he felt her tense as she read.

"What a bastard." She exclaimed, "What a little git. Poor Al. We'll write to him, of course, let him know it's all a load of rubbish and that he shouldn't pay any attention to the nonsense he hears at school or reads in the paper."

"And James," Harry added. "He'll help Al understand it better than we can in a letter."

"He'll probably attack this Smith kid, though." Ginny shook her head, but her lips were curved in a smile.

"If he's still alive after Rose cursed him," Harry pointed out. "We all raised our kids well, huh, Gin?" He shook his head slowly, "Of course, Rose used her wand rather than brute force."

"I think Rose with a wand is probably more terrifying than James without, and you really ought to blame Ron and Hermione for her wild streak." Ginny kissed him lightly and slid from his lap, but Harry kept his arms around her waist and pulled her closer for a moment.

"Can I take Lily for a few days?"

"Where?"

"To the cottage on the shore."

"Why?" Ginny ran her fingers through his hair, her brown eyes looking somewhere over his right shoulder.

"I just want some time with her before…" Harry trailed off, and Ginny supplied the rest.

"Before she realizes what it means to be related to us, too. All right, but only for the weekend. I need to start her classes up again soon. She can't get off schedule just because Al's at Hogwarts."

"No, a weekend's good." Harry smiled at her, "A weekend's perfect."

[x]

Lily had always loved the ocean. Harry was grateful that he and Ginny had managed to buy the house on the shore back when Lily was just a baby, so she could spend her holidays surrounded by the things she loved the most – the treacherous tug of the tide, the five legged starfish, the frantic dives of the gulls.

She didn't question Harry when he asked her if she wanted to go to the beach on Saturday, she just threw her arms around his legs and smiled up at him, "_Can we?_"

She practically ran to the fireplace after he handed her her green bag, expertly packed with the essentials: pants, shirts and jeans; and those things that Lily considered essential: notebooks, colored pencils, a shovel and pail and an illustrated book on sea life.

Ginny brushed a kiss across her cheek before she and Harry disappeared in the green flames, both calling out "The Sea Dragon" and falling out into the small kitchen of their home on the coast.

Lily dropped her bag on the floor and tugged off her jeans and shirt and ran out the front to meet the icy waves dressed only in a green swimming suit. Harry shook his head and grabbed a towel to greet her with on the beach, but he didn't try to stop her.

The water was cold this late in the summer – early September, a month most would consider autumn, but Lily had never cared about the temperature of her ocean. She was coated in saltwater from half past six in the morning till half past seven at night and she never got ill. Back when she was younger – four, five, six – she used to tell Harry that she was a mermaid, and it wasn't until he gave her _Magical Creatures of the Deep_ for her seventh birthday that she understood why Al and James had teased her about being a mermaid and why Harry and Ginny bit back smiles every time she declared her mermaid-ness.

At nine, she had mostly given up her dreams of someday living beneath the surface, and had instead begun taking notes on any form of life she came across, from slips of seaweed curved through the waves to seals clamoring on the rocks and Harry was sure that the minute she arrived at Hogwarts she'd unravel all the secrets surrounding the giant squid.

But this morning he was surprised to see that instead of sketching the creatures in the tidal pools, or trying to carry on a conversation with the cormorants sitting on the rocks jutting from the water, she sat beside two other children, their feet pale in the water, their hands full of sand and their buckets tipped over to form sandcastles just beyond the reach of the waves.

Harry smiled and spread his towel on the sand, settling down to a morning of making sure that Lily didn't attack the Muggle – at least he thought they were Muggles – children for saying something she didn't agree with, or anything.

Then he noticed that the other people on the beach – an older couple he assumed were Lily's playmates' parents – kept glancing over at him, and when he nodded a greeting at them they turned and giggled at each other.

"Oh," he stood quickly, realization hitting him.

But he was too late to protect Lily's naivety.

"Your dad's Harry Potter?" the little girl squealed.

"I knew you looked familiar! You're all over the gossip papers my mum reads."

"Am I?" Lily feigned disinterest, her hands continuing to mold sand and Harry hesitated, stuck on some sick need to see how his daughter handled herself.

"Yes. And my mum's always saying how sorry she is for you lot, because _your _mum's such a shrew."

"A shrew," Lily repeated, tilting her head to the side. "Well, tell your mum she can stop feeling bad then, 'cause my mum is _not _a shrew."

"And your dad's always working," the little boy added, "so you don't have any 'stabilizing factor' in your life."

"He isn't," Lily said, glancing up the beach. A smile lit her face when she saw that Harry stood only a few feet away. "See, he's right here. Dad this is Leona and Brian. They seem to think," she lowered her voice, "that I come from a broken home." She could only have learned those words from watching afternoon soaps at Hermione's parents' house.

Her laugh made Harry's heart a little lighter, "And do you?" He asked, holding a hand out to her.

"No. Our home," she told the children, her eyes pinning them to the sand with a strength that surprised Harry, "is entirely whole, and very, very happy. Maybe your mum's gossip columns could talk about _that_."

She took Harry's hand and followed him up the beach, after he tossed a seemingly polite, "Nice meeting you," to the children.

"Dad," Lily kicked her legs against the table, one toe striking the table leg angrily every few seconds. "Why is everyone always asking about us?"

"Because, sweetie," Harry placed a mug of hot chocolate in front of her, "Your mum and I, and your aunts and uncles, were all involved in a war many years ago – years before you were born – and we fought for the good guys and we won."

"But why," Lily wiped at some whip cream that had stuck to her lip, "do they all think Mum's bad? Why don't they want to know good things about us?"

"You know when you're reading a book, and there's always a sad part before the happy ending?"

Lily nodded, "Yeah."

"Which part of the book is the most fun to read?"

She bit her lip, "The sad stuff, I guess."

"So if the gossip columns printed the truth about us, do you think anyone would read it?"

Lily shrugged, "I guess not. We are pretty boring. But why do people _even care _ about us?"

Harry shook his head, "That, Lily love, is something I've never understood. But as long as we know the truth, that's all that matters."

"That's all that matters," Lily repeated, nodding sagely. "Okay. Do you think you could take me out to see the phosphorescence tonight?"

"As long as you don't tell your mother." Harry laughed as Lily nodded, like this was a given.

After he tucked Lily into her bed at home the next night, Harry found Ginny sitting in the living room and sat beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and inhaling the strawberry scent of her hair. "I don't think we need to worry about Lily."

"No," Ginny agreed, "No, I don't think we ever did."

**A/N:** Review if you'd like to.  
Um. Just…don't be too mean, please.


End file.
